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2025 Hiring Pause

182 points by MinimalAction 2y ago

very_good_man 2y ago
[flagged]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
submeta 2y ago
> due to "significant financial uncertainty" in higher education, This is directly linked to the new Trump administration's policies. The university explicitly cites potential deep cuts to federal research funding, new tax legislation affecting endowment income, and ongoing concerns about rapid growth and escalating costs as primary reasons for this decision. This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. The university's four-month hiring freeze coincides with similar measures at other prestigious institutions like Stanford, MIT, and Northwestern, all responding to the broader context of the Trump administration's proposals to eliminate the Department of Education and Executive Orders reducing scientific research funding. This new US government is deeply hurting itself and destroying most valuable assets. Which it needs to compete against China or Europe.
- cuuupid 2y ago
  > This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. This is less than 0.75% of Cornell's endowment, so I'm not sure there is a strong case for causation here.
  - 28304283409234 2y ago
    What is Cornell's endowment used for? Edit: Also: Who were the donors? What restrictions did they place on their donation?
  - tzs 2y ago
    I think you may misunderstand how endowments work. An endowment is a collection of funds that have been donated. Generally each donation is for furtherance of some specific aim that the donor wanted to promote. Usually the terms of the donation are that the money should be managed to support the purpose for which it was donated in perpetuity. To implement that the managers of the endowment invest the money for long term growth, and use the earnings to go toward the purpose of the donation. Cornell currently spends each year around 5% from their endowment, as do most other top schools. Endowments are usually not used to make up unexpected shortfalls for at least 2 reasons: 1. They are already spending all they can consistent with supporting the various causes the donors donated in perpetuity. 2. Because the endowment is a collection of individual donations that were donated for different purposes there might not actually be anything in the endowment that can be used towards a particular shortfall.
baggy_trough 2y ago
[flagged]
loganriebel 2y ago
Cornell has an endowment of 10.7 billion dollars. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/university-endowment-posts-strong-gain-fy-2024 https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/university-endowmen...
- DrBenCarson 2y ago
  Reminder that endowments are highly illiquid and typically are not used to fund budgets
  - nxm 2y ago
    What should they be used for the ?
    - lamp_book 2y ago
      Used? The university is what is used to grow the endowment.
      - y-curious 2y ago
        So what's the point of the endowment then? To make the green numbers go up?
        duskwuff 2y ago
        To be invested and generate returns which can fund the university's programs. As I said in another comment, it's a long-term investment, not a spending fund. You don't eat your seed corn.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      I believe most endowments have conditions. So whatever the donator say?
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      Universities use the interest and dividends to pay for operating expenses. Actually drawing down the fund would just ruin future finances.
EternalFury 2y ago
If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. And, obviously, the administration of education should never be a for-profit venture. Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders depends on it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 2y ago
  If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. It's called The Internet.
  - apples_oranges 2y ago
    there's perhaps something to be said for this argument: if you paid a lot of money for something you might be more motivated to use it wisely. Also I can now get on the Internet and research jet engines or kidney transplants, but unless someone makes me learn the whole curriculum around it and then tests me to check if I understand, it's not worth much.
    - userbinator 2y ago
      and then tests me to check if I understand That's what interviews are for.
      - _proofs 2y ago
        yeah, and also one's personal responsibility to make sure they are indeed learning and practicing. implying i need to be dependent on a school to help me retain learning is a concept that is foreign to me. if i had that kind of dependency in my learning life, i'd be unemployed.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Ahh yes, the internet. Teaching babies about cursed Elsa, young children about alternative history, frustrated young men to blame women and minorities for their problem, and women that they will never be pretty enough without consuming product. Oh and the practically unlimited porn along all stages. Crassness aside. 1. the internet is getting more and more pay walls too. So proper education isn't even free on the internet without months of curation. 2. People who make this claim must not have seen studies about homseschooled kids. That social element in being around a group of peers is crucial development that you can't really simulate anywhere else (without again, a crap ton of money for camps or something). Especially these days when everything is trying to isolate off.
testfoobar 2y ago
Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-doubled-staff-to-student-ratio/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double... In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff. In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff. In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1 This is insane.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  What does the non-faculty staff does? Is it maybe connected to technical staff? They Can’t all be management?
  - jagged-chisel 2y ago
    Janitorial, technical, nutritional … basically anyone not involved in educating students “non-faculty.”
    - freehorse 2y ago
      So including people performing a big chunk of essential research tasks and who do not fall into the "professor" or "student" category.
    - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
      I would assume non-student TAs (who do teach students), lab technical staff (who maintain equipment and and more directly enable teaching than janitorial staff) and such are also all non-staff.
      - biophysboy 2y ago
        Non-student TAs are typically grad students whose research lab lacks research assistant funding.
        2y ago
mi_lk 2y ago
Same at Stanford https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring
- AznHisoka 2y ago
  As well as MIT https://hr.mit.edu/jobs https://hr.mit.edu/jobs
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
ineedaj0b 2y ago
How are the ivy leagues NOT financially independent? People claw/cheat/do whatever it takes to get in. Ivy's employ some of the best raw IQ people we have. Endowment funds over years should blossom. Could they be so smart to 'redline', to maximally extract as much funds from the Gov as possible while also pumping up their investments? Or might they not have managed funds well enough and truly cannot afford things? if scenario 1) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 75% prior budget levels if scenario 2) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 25% prior budget levels *in both cases we need to remove regulations on schools so they can fire all the admin (they claim to need to keep up legally inane wild things) and pay the professors/researchers more. Colleges and Universities are already on a downward trend; the perfect storm of declining enrollment/population numbers and AI potentially wiping out what they offer. Colleges and University were meant to be a special protected Eunuch class studying 'the dark arts', but they've publicly become known havens of scheming Eunuchs trying to overthrow the emperor. Too close to the sun
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  you got the academic and economics right. but ignored the politics. academic politics is very exclusive... and the circle in it owns lots of capital. so when capital goes on strike, they fall in line.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I imagine they are, but they will still have some mindset of a business and cut spending in lieu of economic headwinds. Like pretty much every industry in the last few years. I think the ivies will be fine. It's 99% of other universities without 10b in endowments I'm worried about.
- freehorse 2y ago
  I assume they, like most orgs, make a planning based on some available budget. If the budget gets higher, they will expand. If it gets lower, they will reduce their expenses/spread. I also assume that the reduction of overhead in particular is gonna hurt such institutions _a lot_ because they have exactly planned based on that. I cannot speak about Cornell specifically, I do not know if they have a bloated administration or superfluous expenses. But the truth is that admin stuff are necessary for supporting education and research. Having been in universities during admin reforms reducing admin stuff (claiming that they make "smart restructuring") it always negatively affects work done in the university in one way or another. Usually, it means that research staff will have to pick up some of the admin work themselves, or be offered less support doing it. As research staff are usually paid more than admin stuff, that is not necessarily effective (unless it is assumed that research stuff will be working overtime anyway). In any case, it does not seem like an efficient move most of the times, even if it seems so to the bureaucrats who make these plans.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Not going to lie, I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber ------ On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League is feeling a result of this economy and administration. What does that say about any other public school? Is post-secondary education going to collapse?
- tdeck 2y ago
  > I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. I'm curious if this is because you never heard about what was in Project 2025, or didn't think Trump would win, or didn't think he would enact it?
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I learned from 2016 and didn't discount the idea of Trump winning again. I just didn't think he'd enact it. He'd be blocked by properly smart people who realize across the board that "this will impact my money". And to be fair some smart people (in the courts) are blocking it. I just didn't think so many illegal actions in the course of a month would escalate this far without. It makes Nixon look like the Dali Lhama.
- giantg2 2y ago
  It's all about the choices. Post secondary schools had easy money (student loans, grants, expanding endowments) and rapidly expanding enrollment for decades. It seems many schools thought that would continue, but we saw enrollment plateau and even decrease. Ivy schools have options - lower prestige to increase enrollment, or lean on prestige and endowments to raise prices. Other schools will likely cut staff/services and increase class sizes. I went to a state school and their enrollment has dropped 25% since I was there. It seems tuition went up, state funding per student is higher (not sure if total is the same or higher), some upgrades were put off, and some services seem to have been scaled back.
MinimalAction 2y ago
Other institutions are also following the lead: MIT [0], Stanford [1], North Carolina State [2], UCSD [3], and perhaps there will be many others. [0]: https://hr.mit.edu/jobs https://hr.mit.edu/jobs [1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring [2]: https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-state-hiring-freeze-february-2025/ https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-state-hiring-freeze-f... [3]: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/02/20/uc-san-diego-bracing-for-more-than-200m-in-funding-cuts-freezes-faculty-hiring/ https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/02/20/uc-san-diego...
znpy 2y ago
> To ensure that we continue to thrive in an even more complex future, we must commit, across every part of our institution, to a sustainable budget today. Are they implicitly admitting they have been living on an unsustainable budget so far? Seeing other comments bringing up the numbers of staff vs students+faculty would suggest that’s the case…
- sega_sai 2y ago
  They had a sustainable budget, but the government decided to cut already agreed budgets.
- acdha 2y ago
  Their budget is unsustainable in the same way that your budget is unsustainable if your boss cuts your pay. They have setup education and research programs based on decades of past funding, but that was unexpectedly subject to illegal reductions with the promise of permanent reductions, nothing like which has happened before and which is completely disconnected from any kind of economic necessity. It’s not like we had some kind of natural disaster or pandemic which actually shrunk the economy and tax revenue but simply a political power play trying to cancel perceived class enemies.
jimnotgym 2y ago
From the article > Together with all of American higher education, Cornell is entering a time of significant financial uncertainty From Wikipedia >As of 2024, Cornell University has an endowment of $10.7 billion
- ricardobeat 2y ago
  Check the top discussion for some perspective on what that really means. This barely covers two years of operation, funds have a lot of use restrictions by donors, and you can only spend cash once.
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    I'm more than aware of that. It gives one considerable flexibility however to have such a large fund. There is no suggestion in the discussions that the College will lose all of its other income, this would allow considerable time to weather and temporary storm
DidYaWipe 2y ago
Can't speak in regard to Cornell, but I think it's well past time to revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that rip students off with sky-high tuition while sitting on huge endowments. It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums. My university jacked tuition 24% in one year; and when asked why, they essentially said "because everyone else did." For this and other offensive behavior, I instructed them to never again ask me for a penny; and they haven't.
- gruez 2y ago
  >but I think it's well past time to revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that rip students off with sky-high tuition while sitting on huge endowments As other people have mentioned in this thread, the point of endowments is to provide a steady source of income for the university's activities, not a piggy bank you can raid. >It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums. I'm sure the right is equally mad about universities "blowing money" on humanities programs as well. Should we get rid of those as well?
  - givemeethekeys 2y ago
    How convenient. Call money something else to continue ripping people off.
    - gruez 2y ago
      Is your implication that non-profits shouldn't be able to keep money on hand and should spend anything they have saved ASAP?
      - givemeethekeys 2y ago
        Nope. It is my implication that they are sitting on a large pile of money and getting away with ripping people off, on top of tax breaks and a lifetime of indentured servitude for anyone foolish enough to take the bait.
  - 2y ago
hooloovoo_zoo 2y ago
> The pause best positions us, due to the increased level of review, to carefully and with due restraint, advance only those positions that are determined to be essential at this time. What twisted mind concocted this sentence?
- bfLives 2y ago
  From the sound of it, a whole bunch of them.
araes 2y ago
For context on the Cornell numbers with breakdowns on revenue and expenditure, here's Cornell's page on: Operating Budget: Sources and Uses: https://finance.cornell.edu/financial-guide/operating-budget-sources-and-uses https://finance.cornell.edu/financial-guide/operating-budget... Operating Capital Budget Plan (PDF): https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FY-2024-Operating-Capital-Budget-Plan.pdf https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FY-2024-O... Consolidated Financial Statement: (PDF): https://finance.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/cornell-financial-report-FY2024.pdf https://finance.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/cornell-fina... From pg 45 of CFS, compensation and benefits is definitely Cornell's largest category. Instruction and Healthcare services making up about $1.3B each. Instruction, student services and academic support: $1,336,694 Research: $481,268 Public service: $108,197 Healthcare services: $1,339,074 Institutional support: $539,278 Enterprises and subsidiaries: $146,630 Total Compensation and benefits: $3,951,141
elashri 2y ago
While I understand that people have their problems with universities tuition and loans ..etc. The problem is here is that funding for basic and applied science on all front is being cut. It does provide a lot of jobs and supports a lot of universities operations too. Universities build labs which does provide infrastructure (buildings and other facilities) and NSF, NIH and DOE provide funds to use these facilities to pursue research. So these agencies have dependency on universities to provide these research facilities and manage hiring and compliance with rules. Now there are many problems with current system which need to be addressed. But you don't solve the cancer in the cells by killing cells and thus killing patient. But you use targeted approach to the problem. This needs some modifications to the rules and deep changes in laws that will require further study and discussion. This is of course not going to happen currently. Now some people argue that the budget is a problem and debt and deficit is more important. But again lets talk data. The whole NSF and NIH budget is less than $60B dollars in 2024 which amounts to a little bit less than 1% of the total budget. If you compare it with other Items in the budget percentage wise you will get (DoD - 7.5%), (Medicare - 6.7%), (Social Security - 4.6%), (Medicaid - 10%),(National Debt Interest - 15%). So even cutting it all will not achieve any significant improvement while create a lot of problems. There are a significant part of economy and jobs are supported by these money. The return on investment is positive in most cases and you are leading in innovation and most of scientific frontier. One can argue that these two items are very cheap to maintain you dominance than another couple of air craft carriers (and their operation costs). If you tried and achieved any reduction in the big items in the federal budget you will be saving something near the total budget of NIH and NSF. But again for some reason a lot of focus on these programs while less focus on big items for some reason.
rambojohnson 2y ago
I’m so tired of this corporate jargon infecting academia. Universities used to value clarity, now they sound like HR memos. It’s the same playbook: bloat admin, cut actual workers, rebrand inefficiency as strategy.
motbus3 2y ago
I worry that every penny saved will fuel an unnecessary war
mnky9800n 2y ago
What does Cornell's 10 billion dollar endowment pay for?
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  It produces about 900 million in interest to run Cornell.
  - mnky9800n 2y ago
    apparently that only accounts for less than 20% of the operating budget: https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FY25-Operating-Captial-Budget.pdf https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FY25-Oper...
42772827 2y ago
My working theory is that wage growth was getting to be too much for the corporations so flooding the market with candidates is meant to counteract that.
throwaway-blaze 2y ago
Not mentioned -- Cornell has an $11bn endowment that can be tapped to make up some of the shortfall. Any issues with Federal funding will be hurting smaller schools and schools with smaller endowments way before hurting Cornell.
cabbagepanda 2y ago
I was on the faculty at several schools, private, top 10, public, top 20, etc. Staff categorically does not include graduate students and post-docs, or teaching faculty. The staff expansion problem is the main problem facing academia. There is staff for handling day-to-day functioning of a department, they are usually over-worked and under-payed. This has not expanded and is not a problem. The main problem is staff at the dean and above level. They are nebulous and their job functions rather diffuse. My impression is that appointments in those functions are with some frequency obtained through nepotism. Furthermore the staff in those functions is often highly ideological. Their true main function seems to bully faculty so that we are constantly "put in our place". The point is to shred to pieces the old principles of shared governance. Essentially they want to make us _their_ employees. If you don't believe me, I can expand on the various interactions that I had with such staff. An extreme example of this is the expansion of staff at UC's into faculty hiring, they now pre-sift all applications for ideological compliance first and then pass on the pre-sifted packet to the faculty. Here is the staff that I am aware of and that I had the pleasure to interact with: Staff that handles disability accommodations (a large percentage of students are now officially "disabled" and use this disability to gain advantages when taking exams) , staff that is assigned to each student to handle their academic problems or advise them on which course to take (unnecessary they can just talk to faculty), staff that is in charge of Title IX (they don't do much and those departments employ pricey lawyers), staff that handles your grant submissions (their only useful function is making the difficult budget computations for the draconian shares that the university takes for itself, they also sometimes pester faculty about irrelevant things and refuse to submit the grant unless you satisfy them). 99% of the work of that staff is busy work and could be easily cut. I am sure their salaries are all in the 100+K categories. I 'd venture to say that if they are cut faculty would be made more efficient. I have also met staff that is in charge of basically nothing, they attend an enormous amount of committees and pushes for some "change" that never materializes. It is understood these days among the faculty that anybody who wants a real salary increase (but doesn't have the chops to get an external offer) needs to become part of that staff, usually in the form of some deanlet handling some obtuse issue. You probably see the problem. In the meantime faculty is still performing all the critical functions: we serve on admission committees for graduate students, we serve on post-doc committees, we do the faculty interviews, we do the research, we teach the classes, but our salary increases are barely matched with inflation, essentially regardless of individual performance. By the way, there is no justification for a hiring freeze in this environment where no real hardship has materialized yet. It is also theater since most hiring has concluded by now. It will be used as a justification to give me no increase this year, I am sure, while the endowment will grow. All of course will be blamed on the bad orange man in the white house.
muaytimbo 2y ago
10.7B endowment. Clearly can't make it without federal funds.

2025 Hiring Pause

182 points by MinimalAction 2y ago

very_good_man 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

submeta 2y ago

> due to "significant financial uncertainty" in higher education, This is directly linked to the new Trump administration's policies. The university explicitly cites potential deep cuts to federal research funding, new tax legislation affecting endowment income, and ongoing concerns about rapid growth and escalating costs as primary reasons for this decision. This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. The university's four-month hiring freeze coincides with similar measures at other prestigious institutions like Stanford, MIT, and Northwestern, all responding to the broader context of the Trump administration's proposals to eliminate the Department of Education and Executive Orders reducing scientific research funding. This new US government is deeply hurting itself and destroying most valuable assets. Which it needs to compete against China or Europe.

cuuupid 2y ago
> This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. This is less than 0.75% of Cornell's endowment, so I'm not sure there is a strong case for causation here.
- 28304283409234 2y ago
  What is Cornell's endowment used for? Edit: Also: Who were the donors? What restrictions did they place on their donation?
- tzs 2y ago
  I think you may misunderstand how endowments work. An endowment is a collection of funds that have been donated. Generally each donation is for furtherance of some specific aim that the donor wanted to promote. Usually the terms of the donation are that the money should be managed to support the purpose for which it was donated in perpetuity. To implement that the managers of the endowment invest the money for long term growth, and use the earnings to go toward the purpose of the donation. Cornell currently spends each year around 5% from their endowment, as do most other top schools. Endowments are usually not used to make up unexpected shortfalls for at least 2 reasons: 1. They are already spending all they can consistent with supporting the various causes the donors donated in perpetuity. 2. Because the endowment is a collection of individual donations that were donated for different purposes there might not actually be anything in the endowment that can be used towards a particular shortfall.

baggy_trough 2y ago

[flagged]

loganriebel 2y ago

Cornell has an endowment of 10.7 billion dollars. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/university-endowment-posts-strong-gain-fy-2024 https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/university-endowmen...

DrBenCarson 2y ago
Reminder that endowments are highly illiquid and typically are not used to fund budgets
- nxm 2y ago
  What should they be used for the ?
  - lamp_book 2y ago
    Used? The university is what is used to grow the endowment.
    - y-curious 2y ago
      So what's the point of the endowment then? To make the green numbers go up?
      - duskwuff 2y ago
        To be invested and generate returns which can fund the university's programs. As I said in another comment, it's a long-term investment, not a spending fund. You don't eat your seed corn.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I believe most endowments have conditions. So whatever the donator say?
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Universities use the interest and dividends to pay for operating expenses. Actually drawing down the fund would just ruin future finances.

EternalFury 2y ago

If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. And, obviously, the administration of education should never be a for-profit venture. Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders depends on it.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 2y ago
If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. It's called The Internet.
- apples_oranges 2y ago
  there's perhaps something to be said for this argument: if you paid a lot of money for something you might be more motivated to use it wisely. Also I can now get on the Internet and research jet engines or kidney transplants, but unless someone makes me learn the whole curriculum around it and then tests me to check if I understand, it's not worth much.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    and then tests me to check if I understand That's what interviews are for.
    - _proofs 2y ago
      yeah, and also one's personal responsibility to make sure they are indeed learning and practicing. implying i need to be dependent on a school to help me retain learning is a concept that is foreign to me. if i had that kind of dependency in my learning life, i'd be unemployed.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Ahh yes, the internet. Teaching babies about cursed Elsa, young children about alternative history, frustrated young men to blame women and minorities for their problem, and women that they will never be pretty enough without consuming product. Oh and the practically unlimited porn along all stages. Crassness aside. 1. the internet is getting more and more pay walls too. So proper education isn't even free on the internet without months of curation. 2. People who make this claim must not have seen studies about homseschooled kids. That social element in being around a group of peers is crucial development that you can't really simulate anywhere else (without again, a crap ton of money for camps or something). Especially these days when everything is trying to isolate off.

testfoobar 2y ago

Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-doubled-staff-to-student-ratio/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double... In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff. In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff. In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1 This is insane.

mrtksn 2y ago
What does the non-faculty staff does? Is it maybe connected to technical staff? They Can’t all be management?
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  Janitorial, technical, nutritional … basically anyone not involved in educating students “non-faculty.”
  - freehorse 2y ago
    So including people performing a big chunk of essential research tasks and who do not fall into the "professor" or "student" category.
  - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
    I would assume non-student TAs (who do teach students), lab technical staff (who maintain equipment and and more directly enable teaching than janitorial staff) and such are also all non-staff.
    - biophysboy 2y ago
      Non-student TAs are typically grad students whose research lab lacks research assistant funding.
      - 2y ago

mi_lk 2y ago

Same at Stanford https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring

AznHisoka 2y ago
As well as MIT https://hr.mit.edu/jobs https://hr.mit.edu/jobs
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

ineedaj0b 2y ago

How are the ivy leagues NOT financially independent? People claw/cheat/do whatever it takes to get in. Ivy's employ some of the best raw IQ people we have. Endowment funds over years should blossom. Could they be so smart to 'redline', to maximally extract as much funds from the Gov as possible while also pumping up their investments? Or might they not have managed funds well enough and truly cannot afford things? if scenario 1) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 75% prior budget levels if scenario 2) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 25% prior budget levels *in both cases we need to remove regulations on schools so they can fire all the admin (they claim to need to keep up legally inane wild things) and pay the professors/researchers more. Colleges and Universities are already on a downward trend; the perfect storm of declining enrollment/population numbers and AI potentially wiping out what they offer. Colleges and University were meant to be a special protected Eunuch class studying 'the dark arts', but they've publicly become known havens of scheming Eunuchs trying to overthrow the emperor. Too close to the sun

1oooqooq 2y ago
you got the academic and economics right. but ignored the politics. academic politics is very exclusive... and the circle in it owns lots of capital. so when capital goes on strike, they fall in line.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
I imagine they are, but they will still have some mindset of a business and cut spending in lieu of economic headwinds. Like pretty much every industry in the last few years. I think the ivies will be fine. It's 99% of other universities without 10b in endowments I'm worried about.
freehorse 2y ago
I assume they, like most orgs, make a planning based on some available budget. If the budget gets higher, they will expand. If it gets lower, they will reduce their expenses/spread. I also assume that the reduction of overhead in particular is gonna hurt such institutions _a lot_ because they have exactly planned based on that. I cannot speak about Cornell specifically, I do not know if they have a bloated administration or superfluous expenses. But the truth is that admin stuff are necessary for supporting education and research. Having been in universities during admin reforms reducing admin stuff (claiming that they make "smart restructuring") it always negatively affects work done in the university in one way or another. Usually, it means that research staff will have to pick up some of the admin work themselves, or be offered less support doing it. As research staff are usually paid more than admin stuff, that is not necessarily effective (unless it is assumed that research stuff will be working overtime anyway). In any case, it does not seem like an efficient move most of the times, even if it seems so to the bureaucrats who make these plans.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Not going to lie, I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber ------ On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League is feeling a result of this economy and administration. What does that say about any other public school? Is post-secondary education going to collapse?

tdeck 2y ago
> I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. I'm curious if this is because you never heard about what was in Project 2025, or didn't think Trump would win, or didn't think he would enact it?
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I learned from 2016 and didn't discount the idea of Trump winning again. I just didn't think he'd enact it. He'd be blocked by properly smart people who realize across the board that "this will impact my money". And to be fair some smart people (in the courts) are blocking it. I just didn't think so many illegal actions in the course of a month would escalate this far without. It makes Nixon look like the Dali Lhama.
giantg2 2y ago
It's all about the choices. Post secondary schools had easy money (student loans, grants, expanding endowments) and rapidly expanding enrollment for decades. It seems many schools thought that would continue, but we saw enrollment plateau and even decrease. Ivy schools have options - lower prestige to increase enrollment, or lean on prestige and endowments to raise prices. Other schools will likely cut staff/services and increase class sizes. I went to a state school and their enrollment has dropped 25% since I was there. It seems tuition went up, state funding per student is higher (not sure if total is the same or higher), some upgrades were put off, and some services seem to have been scaled back.

MinimalAction 2y ago

Other institutions are also following the lead: MIT [0], Stanford [1], North Carolina State [2], UCSD [3], and perhaps there will be many others. [0]: https://hr.mit.edu/jobs https://hr.mit.edu/jobs [1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring [2]: https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-state-hiring-freeze-february-2025/ https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-state-hiring-freeze-f... [3]: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/02/20/uc-san-diego-bracing-for-more-than-200m-in-funding-cuts-freezes-faculty-hiring/ https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/02/20/uc-san-diego...

znpy 2y ago

> To ensure that we continue to thrive in an even more complex future, we must commit, across every part of our institution, to a sustainable budget today. Are they implicitly admitting they have been living on an unsustainable budget so far? Seeing other comments bringing up the numbers of staff vs students+faculty would suggest that’s the case…

sega_sai 2y ago
They had a sustainable budget, but the government decided to cut already agreed budgets.
acdha 2y ago
Their budget is unsustainable in the same way that your budget is unsustainable if your boss cuts your pay. They have setup education and research programs based on decades of past funding, but that was unexpectedly subject to illegal reductions with the promise of permanent reductions, nothing like which has happened before and which is completely disconnected from any kind of economic necessity. It’s not like we had some kind of natural disaster or pandemic which actually shrunk the economy and tax revenue but simply a political power play trying to cancel perceived class enemies.

jimnotgym 2y ago

From the article > Together with all of American higher education, Cornell is entering a time of significant financial uncertainty From Wikipedia >As of 2024, Cornell University has an endowment of $10.7 billion

ricardobeat 2y ago
Check the top discussion for some perspective on what that really means. This barely covers two years of operation, funds have a lot of use restrictions by donors, and you can only spend cash once.
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  I'm more than aware of that. It gives one considerable flexibility however to have such a large fund. There is no suggestion in the discussions that the College will lose all of its other income, this would allow considerable time to weather and temporary storm

DidYaWipe 2y ago

Can't speak in regard to Cornell, but I think it's well past time to revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that rip students off with sky-high tuition while sitting on huge endowments. It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums. My university jacked tuition 24% in one year; and when asked why, they essentially said "because everyone else did." For this and other offensive behavior, I instructed them to never again ask me for a penny; and they haven't.

gruez 2y ago
>but I think it's well past time to revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that rip students off with sky-high tuition while sitting on huge endowments As other people have mentioned in this thread, the point of endowments is to provide a steady source of income for the university's activities, not a piggy bank you can raid. >It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums. I'm sure the right is equally mad about universities "blowing money" on humanities programs as well. Should we get rid of those as well?
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  How convenient. Call money something else to continue ripping people off.
  - gruez 2y ago
    Is your implication that non-profits shouldn't be able to keep money on hand and should spend anything they have saved ASAP?
    - givemeethekeys 2y ago
      Nope. It is my implication that they are sitting on a large pile of money and getting away with ripping people off, on top of tax breaks and a lifetime of indentured servitude for anyone foolish enough to take the bait.
- 2y ago

hooloovoo_zoo 2y ago

> The pause best positions us, due to the increased level of review, to carefully and with due restraint, advance only those positions that are determined to be essential at this time. What twisted mind concocted this sentence?

bfLives 2y ago
From the sound of it, a whole bunch of them.

araes 2y ago

For context on the Cornell numbers with breakdowns on revenue and expenditure, here's Cornell's page on: Operating Budget: Sources and Uses: https://finance.cornell.edu/financial-guide/operating-budget-sources-and-uses https://finance.cornell.edu/financial-guide/operating-budget... Operating Capital Budget Plan (PDF): https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FY-2024-Operating-Capital-Budget-Plan.pdf https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FY-2024-O... Consolidated Financial Statement: (PDF): https://finance.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/cornell-financial-report-FY2024.pdf https://finance.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/cornell-fina... From pg 45 of CFS, compensation and benefits is definitely Cornell's largest category. Instruction and Healthcare services making up about $1.3B each. Instruction, student services and academic support: $1,336,694 Research: $481,268 Public service: $108,197 Healthcare services: $1,339,074 Institutional support: $539,278 Enterprises and subsidiaries: $146,630 Total Compensation and benefits: $3,951,141

elashri 2y ago

While I understand that people have their problems with universities tuition and loans ..etc. The problem is here is that funding for basic and applied science on all front is being cut. It does provide a lot of jobs and supports a lot of universities operations too. Universities build labs which does provide infrastructure (buildings and other facilities) and NSF, NIH and DOE provide funds to use these facilities to pursue research. So these agencies have dependency on universities to provide these research facilities and manage hiring and compliance with rules. Now there are many problems with current system which need to be addressed. But you don't solve the cancer in the cells by killing cells and thus killing patient. But you use targeted approach to the problem. This needs some modifications to the rules and deep changes in laws that will require further study and discussion. This is of course not going to happen currently. Now some people argue that the budget is a problem and debt and deficit is more important. But again lets talk data. The whole NSF and NIH budget is less than $60B dollars in 2024 which amounts to a little bit less than 1% of the total budget. If you compare it with other Items in the budget percentage wise you will get (DoD - 7.5%), (Medicare - 6.7%), (Social Security - 4.6%), (Medicaid - 10%),(National Debt Interest - 15%). So even cutting it all will not achieve any significant improvement while create a lot of problems. There are a significant part of economy and jobs are supported by these money. The return on investment is positive in most cases and you are leading in innovation and most of scientific frontier. One can argue that these two items are very cheap to maintain you dominance than another couple of air craft carriers (and their operation costs). If you tried and achieved any reduction in the big items in the federal budget you will be saving something near the total budget of NIH and NSF. But again for some reason a lot of focus on these programs while less focus on big items for some reason.

rambojohnson 2y ago

I’m so tired of this corporate jargon infecting academia. Universities used to value clarity, now they sound like HR memos. It’s the same playbook: bloat admin, cut actual workers, rebrand inefficiency as strategy.

motbus3 2y ago

I worry that every penny saved will fuel an unnecessary war

mnky9800n 2y ago

What does Cornell's 10 billion dollar endowment pay for?

etc-hosts 2y ago
It produces about 900 million in interest to run Cornell.
- mnky9800n 2y ago
  apparently that only accounts for less than 20% of the operating budget: https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FY25-Operating-Captial-Budget.pdf https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FY25-Oper...

42772827 2y ago

My working theory is that wage growth was getting to be too much for the corporations so flooding the market with candidates is meant to counteract that.

throwaway-blaze 2y ago

Not mentioned -- Cornell has an $11bn endowment that can be tapped to make up some of the shortfall. Any issues with Federal funding will be hurting smaller schools and schools with smaller endowments way before hurting Cornell.

cabbagepanda 2y ago

I was on the faculty at several schools, private, top 10, public, top 20, etc. Staff categorically does not include graduate students and post-docs, or teaching faculty. The staff expansion problem is the main problem facing academia. There is staff for handling day-to-day functioning of a department, they are usually over-worked and under-payed. This has not expanded and is not a problem. The main problem is staff at the dean and above level. They are nebulous and their job functions rather diffuse. My impression is that appointments in those functions are with some frequency obtained through nepotism. Furthermore the staff in those functions is often highly ideological. Their true main function seems to bully faculty so that we are constantly "put in our place". The point is to shred to pieces the old principles of shared governance. Essentially they want to make us _their_ employees. If you don't believe me, I can expand on the various interactions that I had with such staff. An extreme example of this is the expansion of staff at UC's into faculty hiring, they now pre-sift all applications for ideological compliance first and then pass on the pre-sifted packet to the faculty. Here is the staff that I am aware of and that I had the pleasure to interact with: Staff that handles disability accommodations (a large percentage of students are now officially "disabled" and use this disability to gain advantages when taking exams) , staff that is assigned to each student to handle their academic problems or advise them on which course to take (unnecessary they can just talk to faculty), staff that is in charge of Title IX (they don't do much and those departments employ pricey lawyers), staff that handles your grant submissions (their only useful function is making the difficult budget computations for the draconian shares that the university takes for itself, they also sometimes pester faculty about irrelevant things and refuse to submit the grant unless you satisfy them). 99% of the work of that staff is busy work and could be easily cut. I am sure their salaries are all in the 100+K categories. I 'd venture to say that if they are cut faculty would be made more efficient. I have also met staff that is in charge of basically nothing, they attend an enormous amount of committees and pushes for some "change" that never materializes. It is understood these days among the faculty that anybody who wants a real salary increase (but doesn't have the chops to get an external offer) needs to become part of that staff, usually in the form of some deanlet handling some obtuse issue. You probably see the problem. In the meantime faculty is still performing all the critical functions: we serve on admission committees for graduate students, we serve on post-doc committees, we do the faculty interviews, we do the research, we teach the classes, but our salary increases are barely matched with inflation, essentially regardless of individual performance. By the way, there is no justification for a hiring freeze in this environment where no real hardship has materialized yet. It is also theater since most hiring has concluded by now. It will be used as a justification to give me no increase this year, I am sure, while the endowment will grow. All of course will be blamed on the bad orange man in the white house.

muaytimbo 2y ago

10.7B endowment. Clearly can't make it without federal funds.